Harding Park might need new greens for future marquee events

In case you missed it, here’s my story from Saturday’s Sporting Green on the future tour events coming to Harding Park — and the renovations likely on tap at the municipal course alongside Lake Merced.

PGA Tour and San Francisco officials convened at Harding Park on Friday to formally announce the Schwab Cup Championship’s return at this time next year.

Peer further ahead and some other notable golf events loom on the horizon, including a PGA Tour playoff tournament in 2016. Also on tap, perhaps: new greens at Harding Park.

Harding Park hosted the Presidents Cup in 2009 -- and might land another one if its greens are replaced in the coming years.

Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the Recreation and Park Department, acknowledged there have been conversations about replacing the course’s putting surfaces. Those greens, now a mixture of bent grass and poa annua, would become completely bent grass, following the lead of nearby private courses (including the Olympic Club).

The project, if it happens, figures to occur after next year’s Schwab Cup. That still would allow time for the new greens to round into shape before Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Co. come to Harding in ’16.

City officials also must find a way to pay for any renovation of the greens, no small obstacle given ever-present budget constraints.

“Resources are always going to be an issue, so we need to figure out the smartest way to do it,” Ginsburg said.

Woods and his colleagues raved about Harding Park’s greens during the American Express Championship in 2005. They were more restrained in their praise (read: unimpressed) during the Presidents Cup in ’09.

The Schwab Cup, the Champions Tour’s season-ending event, will come back to Harding on Oct. 31-Nov. 3. It was held there in 2010 and ’11 before moving to Scottsdale, Ariz., this year, and probably will rotate between San Francisco and Scottsdale through 2016.

The city’s contract with the PGA Tour also raises the possibility of the Presidents Cup returning to Harding Park in 2017 or 2021. That biennial match-play event, pitting top U.S. players against an international team, will be played next year in Dublin, Ohio, and at an international venue in 2015.

“I’d absolutely love to bring the Presidents Cup back to San Francisco,” Mayor Ed Lee said. “There’s such a strong international connection in this city.”